Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy
Darrell Ross—Officer Walmart to his colleagues in the Tulsa Police Department—operates for up to 10 hours a day out of the security office of a Walmart Supercenter in the city’s northeast corner. It’s a small, windowless space with six flatscreen monitors mounted on a pale blue cinder-block wall, and on this hot summer day, the room is packed. Four Walmart employees watch the monitors, which toggle among the dozens of cameras covering the store and parking lot, while doing paperwork and snacking on Cheez Whiz and Club Crackers. In a corner of the room, an off-duty sheriff’s officer, hired by Walmart, makes small talk with the employees.
As soon as Ross walks in the door, around 2 p.m., he’s presented with an 18-year-old who tried to leave the store with a microwave oven. Ross focuses his gaze and talks in a low voice to the young man, who just graduated from high school and plans to go into the military. He also attempts to calm the boy’s mother, who rushed to the store and is worried that her son won’t be able to enlist if he gets a criminal record. “You need to start taking responsibility for your actions,” Ross tells the teenager. “You’re a man now.” He tells the mother that because it was the boy’s first offense, he won’t be arrested—but if he messes up twice more, he’ll be charged with a felony. Ross slips a pair of reading glasses out of his bulletproof vest and writes the young man a summons to appear in court.
Before he can finish the paperwork, Walmart security employees catch another shoplifter. They bring in a middle-aged woman with big sunken eyes and pale cheeks, her hair tied in a messy bun. Employees caught her using phony gift cards. She rattles off excuses: The cards were given to her by a friend, she’s just gotten out of the hospital, she’s dehydrated. At one point she pretends to vomit into a trash can. Picking up the odor of pot, Ross takes a look in her handbag and finds marijuana roaches, along with a small scale and a pill bottle full of baggies. A computer check reveals five outstanding warrants for her arrest.
It’s not unusual for the department to send a van to transport all the criminals Ross arrests at this Walmart. The call log on the store stretches 126 pages, documenting more than 5,000 trips over the past five years. Last year police were called to the store and three other Tulsa Walmarts just under 2,000 times. By comparison, they were called to the city’s four Target stores about 300 times. Most of the calls to the northeast Supercenter were for shoplifting, but there’s no shortage of more serious crimes, including five armed robberies so far this year, a murder suspect who killed himself with a gunshot to the head in the parking lot last year, and, in 2014, a group of men who got into a parking lot shootout that killed one and seriously injured two others.
Police reports from dozens of stores suggest the number of petty crimes committed on Walmart properties nationwide this year will be in the hundreds of thousands. But people dashing out the door with merchandise is the least troubling part of Walmart’s crime problem. More than 200 violent crimes, including attempted kidnappings and multiple stabbings, shootings, and murders, have occurred at the nation’s 4,500 Walmarts this year, or about one a day, according to an analysis of media reports. Sometimes they’re spectacular enough to get national attention. In June, killed a hostage taker at a Walmart in Amarillo, Texas. In July, three Walmart employees in Florida were charged with manslaughter after a shoplifter they chased and pinned down died of asphyxia. Other crimes are just bizarre. On Aug. 8, police discovered a meth labinside a 6-foot-high drainage pipe under a Walmart parking lot in Amherst, N.Y.
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“It’s ridiculous—we are talking about the biggest retailer in the world. I may have half my squad there for hours”
I can't read this. It won't fit on my screen. Weird.
I fixed it C. Try again.
Thank you Ms. Perrie!
Thanks!
Strange. Maybe Walmart has become the village square there? And that's where crime is concentrated?
I think that is exactly what's gone on.
There is a Walmart, just about everywhere. I mean, when I was traveling for work, I knew there was civilization if there was a local Walmart. For most of the small-town places, it is THE place to go and see your friends and shop... It only makes sense that it would also become the place for crime...
Walmart needs to spend some of their billions on more security. The police shouldn't have to cover these stores like this.
That is the point. Walmart needs to take responsibility for their own property.
ABsolutely!
They may pay taxes for police services, but those policemen have other responsibilities, as well!
It's the police's responsibility to cover these stores. If you offer some tax exemptions to Walmart, they may be willing to take up the burden
What we see here is how private business is far more efficient at catching crooks than the government. If it was up to the cops all these thugs would be walking free. They would rather sit around the donut shop all day.
We live in a corrupt society. People laugh at and ridicule those who shoplift WalMart, but pay little attention to cyber thieves and white collar embezzlers, frauds , illegal marketing schemes, etc.
Or thousands of blacks being shot by other blacks in their backyard.